


Summer Chill

by DNA (CatsAndHounds)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 09:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5621629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/pseuds/DNA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Awkward Wizard<br/>Warning: Canadian<br/>Self-indulgent garden cuddling</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Chill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jasper (CatsAndHounds)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/gifts).



Nate hadn’t expected England to be so different. It was, though, in ways he’d never imagined. Everyone was somehow both overly polite and a little bit rude, even though that shouldn’t have been possible. It was warmer than home, but it rained _all the time_. And for such a little country, there were an awful lot of people.

He’d been so excited to be offered a job designing caldrons for Jolenny and Sons, even though it had meant leaving Canada and moving across the Atlantic to Plymouth, England. He’d imagined starting a new, better, _happier_ phase of his life.

It hadn’t been like that. 

He’d arrived at the end of a long, wet winter (the only kind available, he’d later learned). A week after arriving, one of his new co-workers had said, “Guess all the rain will take some time to adjust to.”

Trying to be a good sport, Nate had replied, “Oh, it’s not too bad. Warmer than home, at least.”

His answer had apparently been some kind of faux-pas, although he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he’d inadvertently insulted England’s capacity to deploy truly revolting weather.

Anyway, his relationship with his co-workers had never quite got back on the right foot after that. 

Nate put the finishing touches on his schematic and considered it. He thought it was right, but he’d need to talk to Angus and check that he could transfigure the type of metal Nate wanted.

He walked up the hall to Angus’ office and stuck his head through the door. Angus wasn’t there. Lucine was, though, and looked up when she heard him. Nate forced a smile onto his face although it felt more like a grimace.

“Um, hi,” said Nate. “Um, sorry. Do you know where Angus is?”

“Oh, and I thought you’d come all this way just for my company,” said Lucine sweetly.

“Uh,” Nate said again. “Sorry?” He hovered in the doorway, unsure if it would be more rude to stay or leave.

Lucine sighed and apparently decided to put him out of his misery. “He might be in with Humbert. I’m not sure.”

“Oh, ok. Thanks,” said Nate, and backed away hastily.

Damn. He couldn’t interrupt if Angus was having a meeting with their boss. And who knew how long they’d be!

Maybe Angus was just down in the break room, though. He could go check.

Angus was not in the break room. Randolphus was, however.

“Afternoon, Nathaniel,” he said with a nasty grin.

“Hi,” Nate sighed. He’d never disliked his full name until he’d met this guy. It was the way he said it, as though he’d never heard anything so bizarre. If _his_ name was Randolphus, he wouldn’t go around making fun of other people’s names. But then, he was muggle born. In the wizarding world, a name like Randolphus didn’t stand out at all.

“Have you seen Angus?” Nate asked. 

“Yes,” said Randolphus.

“Really? Where?”

“In his office...”

“But I was just there...”

“...and in the break room, and in the street outside. Oh, once down at the pub...”

“Oh.” Nate deflated as he realised Randolphus was just messing with him. “Never mind. I’ll ask Rose.”

Rose was the tester. She ran the prototype cauldrons through their paces to find flaws. Nate went downstairs and knocked tentatively at the door. You didn’t just walk into Rose’s workshop.

“Just a minute!” Rose shouted. A moment later, he heard her mutter, “bugger.” A soft ‘whump’ followed and some wisps of soft pink mist oozed under the door. Nate edged back.

The door was flung open to reveal Rose on the other side, looking remarkably unscathed except for pink eyebrows.

“You!” she snapped.

“What?” Nate replied, startled.

Rose moved away from the door and Nate followed gingerly. 

“Tell that daft Lucine that she can’t perform a gravity-reversing charm to save her life, will you?” Rose snapped.

“Uh,” said Nate, “okay?” Maybe it would count if he slipped her an anonymous note.

“Hmph,” said Rose. “Pass me that jar of dog’s teeth, will you?”

“Why?” Nate asked, handing it over. “Oh, no! What are you doing?” he squeaked as she tipped a spoonful into the green potion already simmering over the fire. The potion turned an alarming orange colour. Nate looked for a nice, solid table he could hide behind. Rose stirred the potion vigorously and inhaled the scent.

“Well,” she said grudgingly, “I suppose the insulating charm is holding up well enough.”

“You think so?” Nate said weakly.

Rose’s frown cleared and she grinned. “Want to stay while I add the mandrake root?” she asked. “You don’t have any metal with you, do you?”

“No, I d- I mean, no thanks,” said Nate. “I might just...” he stepped towards the door..

“Okay then,” said Rose, turning back towards her cauldron. “Wait,” she said. “Why did you come down here, then?”

“Oh, yeah! I was looking for Angus.”

“Ah,” said Rose. “I should have known. He was here twenty minutes ago, but he agreed to test the invisibility potion, and now I guess he could be anywhere.”

“What?”

Rose laughed. “He said he needed to get more parchment. I’d check the storeroom.”

“Oh, right. Thanks, Rose.” Nate hurried away before she could get too enthusiastic with the mandrake root.

He ran into Angus coming out of the storeroom, carrying a stack of parchment and, for some reason, a set of weights. A yellow feather was caught in his hair, most likely a souvenir of his visit to Rose. Nate’s fingers twitched with the impulse to remove the feather from Angus’s soft-looking, slightly too-long hair, but he held himself back.

“Nate! Hi,” Angus said, smiling.

Nate grinned back. “Hey.” He looked at the weights. “I thought you had a set of those already?”

Angus looked rather sheepish. “Yes, well, about that...” He walked down the hall to his office, indicating that Nate should follow with a tilt of his head.

Angus dumped everything on his desk and pointed to a little metal model on one of the shelves. Nate looked at it. 

It was a quidditch pitch, complete with goal posts and spectator towers. In the middle, on the ground, two opposing Quidditch teams were lined up with their broomsticks. Nate peered closer and then jerked backwards as the little metal figures turned their heads his way and launched into the air.

The referee tossed a quaffle the size of an apple seed into the air, and two bludgers zoomed ferociously around the pitch. A glint of gold caught Nate’s eye and he tried to find it. Yes, there was the snitch, so tiny it was almost impossible to see.

“I wanted to see if I could do it,” Angus explained. “Not just make the figures, but get them to move around as well. I’d like to work on it some more, make it interactive so you could really play a game with it. It’d be great for kids who are too young to play, but I still have to do some more work on it. Anyway.” Angus turned more serious. “That’s what happened to my last set of weights. Don’t tell Humbert, okay mate?”

“Of course not,” said Nate. “Um...”

But Angus was still watching the Quidditch game, and whooped loudly as one of the blue players wove around three red players and made what looked like an impossible goal.

“Wow, did you see that?” Angus exclaimed. “Doesn’t that remind you of that game between the Cannons and the Bashers, when Gilbert got that incredible goal? Must have been, oh, I don’t know, ten years ago at least. You just don’t get players like that anymore.”

And just like that, and for no logical reason, Nate felt inexplicably, unbearably homesick.

“I guess maybe it doesn’t,” Angus said quietly, seeing his face.

Nate shrugged uncomfortably. He hated this sort of attention.

“Is Quidditch not a big deal in Canada?” Angus asked.

“It’s pretty popular, I suppose,” he said. “I didn’t really grow up with it myself, being muggle-born, and it’s just never been as big a deal to me as to some people.”

Angus nodded. “Sounds like you’re just not a sporty type,” he said.

“Oh, no. I was in a hockey league when I was in elementary school. I loved it.” Nate smiled at the memory. “Once I started wizard school, it was a lot harder to get a game going. I still play sometimes with my family, when I visit them. But I haven’t been home in a while.” Suddenly, Nate was horribly aware of his eyes prickling, and cleared his throat harshly. “Um, could you take a look at this? I think I’ve designed a cauldron that can keep mixtures separate until you want them combined, but it’ll need this particular combination of metals...”

Angus took the schematic. He spared Nate a concerned glance but tactfully kept his attention on the plans. “I think this can be done,” he said. “Looks like it’s time to make a prototype.”

“Great!” Nate said briskly. “Let’s get into it, huh? I’ll go get started.”

But as he was turning to go, Angus stopped him. “Hey,” he said, “Nate.”

“Yeah?”

“You live alone, right?”

Nate stared at Angus, trying to figure out why he was asking that question.

“I mean,” Angus added quickly, “I was wondering if you’d want to... come around to my house for dinner tonight. Since you’re so far from home and everything.”

“Um,” said Nate. Did this mean Angus had noticed how lonely he was feeling? Was it a pity invitation? That would be humiliating. “Um,” he said again.

“Or... or not. You can say no,” Angus added quickly. “Sorry, short notice. You’ve probably got plans already.” He looked kind of embarrassed, maybe even disappointed?

“No, no, that sounds great,” Nate babbled, and when he saw Angus’s face light up he didn’t even want to take it back. “I’d love to.”

Nate hurried home after work to pick out a bottle of wine to take to dinner, and to change. Of course, once he’d selected the perfect robe, the one which looked stylish and flattering in a casual, ‘I’m too cool to care what I wear’ sort of way, he tripped while flooing to Angus’s house and scattered soot all over himself and Angus’s lounge room floor.

“Sorry!” Angus exclaimed, sounding upset. “I meant to move that poker but I forgot. Are you all right?”

“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine,” said Nate, cleaning the soot up with a quick charm. He just wished Angus hadn’t witnessed his clumsiness.

They made it to the dinner table without mishap. Angus refused to let Nate help dish up the meal, and dashed into the kitchen to get it ready. It was lasagne, Angus had said, and it smelled amazing. Nate's stomach growled.

There was a lot more clattering coming from the kitchen than seemed normal, but Nate waited patiently until he heard a particularly loud clang. 

"Are you alright in there?" Nate called.

"Fine, fine!" Angus shouted back, and then, in a softer voice that Nate was probably not meant to hear, added, "Merlin's balls."

"Are you sure I can't help?"

The kitchen door swung open, and Angus appeared holding two steaming plates.

"Right! Great!" he said, looking a little frantic. "Here we go, all ready to go."

He put the plates on the table. There was a small square of lasagne, next to a large serving of steamed vegetables and two slices of buttered bread. Nate wondered what had gone on in the kitchen, but decided against asking.

It was a very nice dinner, even if there wasn't as much of it as Nate might have liked. They made small talk until Angus said, "You don't seem to be all that close to anyone at work."

"Uh... no, I suppose not," said Nate. "I mean... I haven't been here very long."

"No," Angus agreed, and Nate was glad he had the tact not to point out that it had been six months since he'd taken the job. "I expect you're busy when you're not at work, anyway. Do you have a... uh, a hockey... team? Here?"

Nate shook his head. Angus put his cutlery on his empty plate and stood up. "Oh, well. I thought... I mean, I had a look for them and I managed to find them eventually..." He picked up a pair of skates by the laces and held them up for Nate to see. "There's a pond in the yard. If you want?"

Nate couldn't hold in a smile, but... "It's summer."

Angus rolled his eyes at him. "Yeah, it's summer. And we're wizards."

A quick freezing charm took care of the pond. Nate did a few laps, not too fast, just enjoying the familiar sensation of it. Angus followed him, a bit less steady but his smile just as wide.

"So, how does this game you like work?" Angus asked.

Nate looked at him. "Well, you know... there's a puck, and you have to hit it into the goal..." He trailed off, expecting Angus to lose interest. 

"Well, go on," Angus said. "We can't play a game if I don't know how!"

"Oh, right!"

Nate found two sticks about the right size after a brief search, and although he'd never been much good a transfiguration, he managed to turn them into two serviceable hockey sticks. Angus's spare skates were a little tight, but Nate couldn't have cared less.

Nate transfigured a stone to be a puck and used his wand to draw glowing red lines on the ice to mark the goal. He'd assumed Angus was humouring him, but he kept going, even though he only managed to score one goal to Nate's ten.

In what appeared to be a change in tactics, Angus began hovering around the goal and trying to block Nate every time he came near. Nate bumped into him gently the first time, not wanting to hurt him. He was pretty sure Angus had no idea how hard a check could be. 

But the second time they collided, Angus pushed back against him, laughing and flailing his arms hilariously to keep his balance. Nate was distracted enough by his antics, amusement and some other emotion he refused to examine, that he let Angus get the puck away from him.

Angus circled around, clumsily manoeuvring the puck in front of him, and Nate considered whether he should let Angus have this one or not. It didn't matter in the end, though. Angus leaned to take the shot, slipped, and crashed straight into Nate, hard enough that they both fell onto the muddy grass at the edge of the pond.

Nate grunted, feeling the breath rush out of his lungs. Angus sounded pretty out of breath too, but from laughing, not from falling.

"Are you... are you... okay?" Angus asked, his eyes watering.

Nate groaned. "I'm fine."

"Sorry. Sorry, I just... that was so funny." Angus wiped at his eyes. "I haven't had so much fun in ages. I hope I didn't hurt you."

He still hadn't got up from where he'd fallen, lying half on top of Nate. He lifted himself up on one elbow, but that just brought his face up where Nate could see it, and the glittering of water still clinging to his eyelashes, and the spot where his lips were peeling...

"Me too," Nate murmured. "I mean, I had heaps of fun too. I'm fine."

"That's good," Angus whispered. He put one hand up on Nate's cheek. "Otherwise, this would be a lot more difficult."

Nate's reactions were somehow several seconds behind events, so that by the time it occurred to him to wonder if Angus was about to kiss him, the kiss was already happening. And by the time he thought to kiss Angus back, the other man was already pulling away. Nate followed him, reaching up to put his hands on Angus's shoulders and tug him back down.

Angus smiled down at him with an expression which was almost wondering. "I wasn't sure," he said. "I thought you felt the same way, but... you're a hard man to read."

Nate must have still been lagging a few minutes behind, because he said, “You kissed me.”

“Uh, yes,” Angus said. He chuckled for a second, then looked worried. “I hope that was okay. It seemed... okay?”

“We should do that again,” said Nate, and he didn’t have to tell Angus twice. Their second kiss turned into a third, and a fourth, and in fact it wasn’t until the shadow of Angus’s house fell on them that Nate realised how long they’d been lying there, trading lazy kisses while his robe was soaked by the damp grass, the ice skates still on their feet.

Angus shifted a little so that he was mostly lying next to Nate, not on top of him. “I suppose we can’t stay out here forever,” he said.

Nate had to admit, he was mildly thrilled by the regretful tone of Angus’s voice. “We can’t,” he agreed. “I need to return the favour.”

“Does that mean you’re going to cook me dinner and let me thrash you at quidditch?” asked Angus.

“Well...” Nate said, realising that actually, that sounded like a pretty great time. “That sounds like a good place to start.”

And suddenly, home didn’t feel all that far away at all.


End file.
